Debra wondered... > Also I was wondering about TB - before antibiotics did people recover > spontaneously, or did the people thought to be threatened who didn't > actually die not really have consumption in the first place.
Yes, I believe some people did recover, due simply to their own body's being able to fight the disease off. I've read of several cases of women who lived in Dublin's tenements in the first half of the 20th century (where TB was endemic) later having chest x-rays and being asked "when did you have TB?". They hadn't even known they'd contracted and recovered from the disease, probably because they were too busy nursing family members at the time. Of course, I don't think having the disease without noticing was a common thing, but people *did* recover from it even before medication (as they recovered from assorted other diseases). > I was reading > recently about consumption in the 18th C, that it was assumed to be a > congenital tendency, rather than contagious, so presumably no steps were > taken to quarantine the afflicted. No, as far as I've been able to tell, there was little or no knowledge that TB was infectious, and little or no effort made to quarantine sufferers. (It's probably a minor miracle that Joyce and Gillian Linton didn't contract the disease from their mother, in "The Chalet School and the Lintons".) Dorian. -- ________________________________________ Girlsown mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] For self-administration and access to archives see http://home.it.net.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/girlsown For FAQs see http://www.club-web.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/girlsown/faq-0.htm
